Human rights theory generally conceptualizes freedom of thought, conscience, religion, and belief as well as freedom of opinion and expression, as offering absolute protection in what is called the forum internum. At a minimum, this is taken to mean the right to maintain thoughts in one’s own mind, whatever they may be and independently of how others may feel about them. However, if we adopt this stance, it seems to imply that there exists an absolute right to hold (...) psychotic delusions. This article takes the position that this conclusion is ethically problematic from the perspective of psychiatric treatment and the rights of persons with psychosis. The article reflects on this particular challenge and sets forth an understanding of freedom in the forum internum that might apply to situations where for various reasons it is not, necessarily accurate to maintain that persons have an absolute right to their own thoughts. For the purpose of proposing such an understanding, the article engages with current debates within human rights theory and political philosophy and analyzes discussions about psychotic delusions and the way in which involuntary treatment is justified. Based on this analysis, this article in turn conceptualizes freedom in the forum internum as ‘negative liberty’, ‘authenticity’, and ‘capability’. This article suggests that when forum internum is redefined as encompassing a right to certain internal capabilities, the right remains meaningful for persons with psychotic delusions as well. (shrink)

The article argues that by the 17th century, despite the increased intellectual exchanges of the time, two different kind of individualism were developing across the Channel — one labeled here as ‘centripetal’, the other one as ‘centrifugal’. On the French side, one witnesses a focus on forum internum, as the only site of uniqueness and authenticity. On the British side, the emphasis switched to forum externum and the equality of wills. The article explores the consequences of these (...) different self-apprehensions of the individual in terms of different understandings of political representation. I claim that, despite today’s general consensus, representing ‘the people’ was not naturally assimilated with an ascending theory of representation. ‘The people’, understood as a whole, was apprehended in France as still higher than its representatives — kings, Estates, or Parlements. The idea of individuals willingly delegating their rights and/or authority to a representative remained for more than a century a peculiar British development. The consequences of this ascending understanding of representation are to be seriously reevaluated. (shrink)

The dispute between naturalism and anti-naturalism has been underway almost since the very beginnings of philosophy. Christian thinkers, by proclaiming that God as Creator transcends the reality He has created, and that human beings as persons transcend the material world, have entered this dispute on the anti-naturalist side. The contemporary dominance in culture of the naturalistic paradigm requires Christian philosophy to reflect on naturalism in the broadest sense (in its various forms), together with its conditions and consequences, and to rethink (...) its relationship to this philosophical tradition. Naturalism rejects the possibility of something existing, being known, or being explained that is separate from the material reality given in empirical cognition. Along with this, it denies human beings transcendence with respect to the natural or social world. In its contemporary iteration, this tradition appeals to the solutions and methods of domain-specific forms of scientific inquiry, relying on them for its own authority. For Christian philosophy, naturalism represents a powerful challenge. It is possible to see in it a threat to Christian philosophy, but it is also possible to discern in it an opportunity for a more critical evaluation of Christian philosophy’s previous solutions, and an opportunity to develop new ones. There is a need for a better understanding of naturalism itself, as well as of what the various domain-specific sciences (including the natural and social sciences, as well as the humanities and, currently, neuroscientific research in particular) have to say about the world and about human beings. Systematic and historico-philosophical questions equally still call for debate – in relation to the centuries-old dispute between naturalism and anti-naturalism, as well as the changing place of Christian thought within it. In our own time, one can witness diverse attempts by Christian thinkers both to critically discuss naturalistic positions and to implement naturalistic approaches or solutions within Christian thought itself. Certainly, the latter cannot ignore the fact that naturalism allows philosophy to maintain cognitive contact with domain-specific forms of scientific inquiry. The organizers plan to conduct this conference in hybrid mode, combining both online and onsite elements. This model will allow all interested persons to participate, while also offering those wishing to actually come to Jesuit University Ignatianum in Krakow the possibility of doing so. (shrink)

In her seminal book, Philosophy and the State in France, Nannerl O. Keohane uncovered something close to a paradox: French absolutism bred a peculiar form of individualism that manifested disregard for civic involvement, yet by the eighteenth century the passive member of the ancient corporations moved without hesitation into participatory politics. The aim of this article is to clarify this apparent paradox. In order to do so, I revive the medieval dialectic between forum internum and forum externum (...) that for more than a thousand years provided the foundation for individualism all across the Western world. One cannot understand the paradoxes that later will mark the French Revolution if one fails to take into consideration the almost obsessive focus on the forum internum and on the authenticity of the self coupled with a drive toward conformism and unity in the forum externum, which was already in place for more than a century before. Furthermore, one cannot understand why political representation as representation of individual wills was not at all appealing to the early modern Frenchmen. Given today's worrisome disaffection of the typical individual with the formalized political sphere, the dialectic of the two fora is worth reconsidering. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Lord Nottingham and the Conscience of EquityDennis R. KlinckI. Introduction"There is nothing more in our Mouths than Conscience," wrote John Sharp in the 1680s, echoing a sentiment that had been expressed before in the seventeenth century.1 Indeed, one modern writer has observed, uncontroversially, that that century "can justly be called the Age of Conscience."2 Among the foci of this preoccupation one can identify such topics as moral and religious (...) casuistry and "liberty of conscience." My focus in this paper is somewhat different: conscience as a criterion of judgment in the Court of Chancery—the court of equity—and particularly its meaning for Heneage Finch, Lord Nottingham, successively Lord Keeper and Lord Chancellor from 1673 to 1682, a seminal figure in the history of English equity.The intimate connection of conscience with the equitable jurisdiction [End Page 123] is a commonplace,3 and certain aspects of it have been quite thoroughly studied.4 A central problem that has been identified with resort to conscience as a criterion of legal judgment is its subjective and hence ostensibly arbitrary nature. This concern goes back a long way. Thomas Audley, in 1526, argued that conscience was an uncertain ground of law because "it depended upon the 'arbitrament' of one man, the chancellor alone."5 The author of The Replication of a Serjeant at the Laws of England similarly raised the complaint of "divers men, divers conscience."6 No doubt the most remembered comment of this sort is John Selden's that the spaciousness of chancellors' consciences might vary as much as the length of their respective feet, so that equitable adjudication on the basis of conscience was "a roguish thing."7 Nottingham himself balked at the idea that justice might be dispensed according to the kind of conscience that amounted only to "the pleasure of a Court which took upon itself to be purely arbitrary."8Indeed, as the father of systematic equity,9 Nottingham apparently devoted himself to the project, undertaken in some measure by certain of his predecessors,10 of making the jurisdiction regular. He repeatedly makes this [End Page 124] point. In the case just cited, he observes that "equity itself would cease to be Justice if the rules and measures of it were not certain and known" and that "conscience" has to be "dispensed by the rules of science" (639). "Rules," "measures," and "science" are by-words of his preoccupation. Elsewhere, he asserts that "if equity be tied to no rule... everything becomes arbitrary."11At the same time, he did not abandon conscience as a kind of touchstone of equity. He refers to it repeatedly, and often speaks of Chancery as a "court of conscience,"12 as if this was a perfectly natural way of describing it. So the question becomes: how did he reconcile the tendency towards arbitrariness thought to be implicit in "conscience" with the ruled, measured, scientific system that he sought to develop? Or putting the question slightly differently: how did he understand or limit the notion of "conscience" so as to make it compatible with the "regular equity" to which he aspired?What appears to have been a crucial distinction for Nottingham in this regard was that between private conscience and public, or perhaps civic, conscience. In the Prolegomena, he says that "there is a twofold conscience, viz. conscientia politica et civilis, et conscientia naturalis et interna" and that "[m]any things are against inward and natural conscience, which cannot be reformed by the regular and political administration of equity" (194). He makes the point again in "the great case" of Cook v. Fountain: "With such a conscience which is only naturalis et interna this Court hath nothing to do; the conscience by which I am to proceed is merely civilis et politica, and tied to certain measures...."13 As Yale points out, this distinction was not new with Nottingham. The distinction between the forum internum and the forum externum was venerable;14 an anonymous Elizabethan case distinguishes between matters of conscience in which equity will intervene and those that must be left to the party's own moral judgment;15 Francis Bacon recognized, at least as alternatives, a party... (shrink)

We have no interest whatever in minimizing the continuing history of racist, sexist, homophobic, or otherwise abusive biologisms, or the urgency of their exposure, that has made the gravamen of so many contemporary projects of critique. At the same time, we fear — with installation of an automatic antibiologism as the unshifting tenet of `theory' — the loss of conceptual access to an entire thought-realm. I was left wondering what danger had been averted by the exclusion of biology. What does (...) the nominative `biological or anatomical body' actually refer to? And what secures the separation of its inadmissible matter from the proper purview of Irigaray's textual interventions? When I asked a question to this effect it was met with a certain nervous comprehension. Deciding, perhaps, that I must still be immersed in a precritical understanding of the body, the speaker dismissed me with a revealing theatrical gesture. As if to emphasize the sheer absurdity of my question she pinched herself and commented `Well I don't mean this body'. And so it seemed with a gesture so matter of fact that it required no further comment, the fact of matter was both decided and dispatched. Feminism has been as deeply implicated in routinized antiessentialism as any of our critical procedures. Even though questions of `the body' have become increasingly fashionable in all manner of feminist projects, the schedule of feminism's antibiologism has been little altered. In most of these projects on `the body', the body in question is pursued in its socially, experientially, or psychically constituted forms, but rarely in its physiologically, biochemically, or microbiologically constituted form, the idea of biological construction having been rendered either unintelligible or naive. Despite an avowed interest in the body, there is a persistent distaste for biological detail. These feminist theories have usually been reluctant to engage with biological data: they retain, and encourage, the fierce antibiologism that marked the emergence of second wave feminism. That feminist scholars are particularly prone to a `knee jerk constructivism' helps explain the reluctance of those in the humanities to engage seriously with the claims of science. This book functions primarily as a reminder to social, political, and cultural theorists, particularly those interested in feminism, antiracism and questions of the politics of globalisation, that they have forgotten a crucial dimension of research, if not necessary to, then certainly useful for more incisively formulating the concepts on which they so heavily, if implicitly rely. It is written as a remembrance of what we have forgotten — not just the body, but that which makes it possible and which limits its actions: the precarious, accidental, contingent, expedient, striving, dynamic status of life in a messy, complicated, resistant, brute world of materiality, a world regulated by the exigencies, the forces, of space and time. We have forgotten the nature, the ontology, of the body, the conditions under which bodies are encultured, psychologized, given identity, historical location, and agency. We have forgotten where we come from. (shrink)

The Forum and the Tower tackles a fascinating and perennial topic: the relationship between the academy and the world of politics. The accomplished Harvard law professor Mary Ann Glendon traces this crucial relationship from Classical Greece taking readers through the Roman Empire, Renaissance Italy, the English revolution, the Federalist era in the US, the French Revolution, the Napoleonic wars, the Concert of Europe, the progressive era, and the New Deal/World War II era.

Much attention has been devoted recently to cases where a controversial speaker is invited to speak on campus and subsequently some members of the university seek to have that speaker disinvited. Debates about such scenarios often blur together legal, normative, and empirical considerations. I seek to help clarify issues by separating key legal, normative, and empirical questions. Central to my examination is the idea of the university as a multi-forum institution—i.e. a complex public institution whose parts contain different types (...) of forums. I conclude that it is sometimes legally and normatively permissible (1) for universities to disinvite speakers, and (2) for students to seek to get speakers they consider unacceptable disinvited. I also suggest that my arguments sometimes extent to shouting down speakers. (shrink)

The theory of deliberative democracy is here furthered in terms of three images that locate its essence in respectively a single forum, a deliberative system, and an encompassing polity featuring particular integrative norms. The first two are ubiquitous, though contested, the third is stated here. Deliberative theorists need to contemplate how practices that make sense in each image connect to the other two. Forums only make sense when linked in a system that can synthesize very different deliberative virtues. Any (...) system’s democratic qualities can only be evaluated in terms of the polity. While judgment in terms of the conditions of normative integration in the polity is therefore primary, particular forums can promote deliberative authenticity in a system, and systems enable inclusive application of deliberative ideals. Deployed in this way, the three images help solve internal disputes and respond to critics. (shrink)

Background In Scandinavia 13–28% of gynecology patients have experienced abuse in health care in their life time, which contradicts the ethical obligations not to harm the patient and to protect the patient's dignity. Concerning learning to act ethically, scholars have emphasized the importance of combining theoretical and practical dimensions. This article explores Forum Play as a way of learning to act ethically in abusive situations in health care. Method Ten health-care workers participating in a Forum Play course took (...) part in this study. To explore participants' experiences of Forum Play, semi-structured interviews were conducted and processed by using the grounded theory analysis techniques of coding and constant comparison. Results The analysis resulted in the core category “developing response–ability.” It encompasses the processes bringing about the ability to respond adequately to situations where abuse occurs and the conditions for these processes, as well as the participants' achieved understanding of the third person's potential to act in a situation with a power imbalance. Forum Play allows participants to reflect on both verbal and body language, and gives them time to enact and think through issues of moral agency. Conclusion The simulated reality of Forum Play offers a platform where learning to act ethically in abusive situations in health care is facilitated by providing a safe space, suspending constricting structural conditions such as hierarchies and lack of time, fostering moral imagination, allowing creativity in developing and trying out a variety of acting alternatives, and reflecting upon the observed and experienced situation. (shrink)

Since 1997, FORUM has been an integral part of the landscape of European studies. In addition to contemporary history, it offers insights into the history of ideas and reviews books on Central and Eastern European history. It offers more than just history--for instance, interdisciplinary discussions by political scientists, literary, legal, and economic scholars, and philosophers. FORUM sees itself as a bridge between East and West. Through the translation and publication of texts and contributions from Russian, Polish, and Czech (...) researchers, it offers the Western reader access to the scholarly discourse of Eastern Europe. The 'short' 20th century is one of the best-documented eras in history. Nevertheless, it holds more mysteries than many periods of antiquity or the Middle Ages of which we have only sparse relics. One of the biggest mysteries is the question of the causes of the collapse of civilization in the first half of the century. In Germany as well as in Russia, regimes came to power invoking the implementation of utopias that had been dreamt up during the 'long' 19th century yet which had been considered unrealizable. Now, it turned out, even the most radical utopian blueprint could be put into place. This development, intertwined with an extraordinarily deep crisis of European democracy, did not happen overnight. It had been looming for a long time. There had even been several prescient voices heralding the upcoming crisis--trailing away without being noticed. Volume 19, Issue 1 of FORUM recognizes some of these unheard prophets and scrutinizes their writings. (shrink)

Abstract:In this forum, Marilyn Strathern and Jade S. Sasser review Adele Clarke and Donna Haraway's edited volume Making Kin, Not Population: Reconceiving Generations (Prickly Paradigm Press, 2018). Responses from multiple authors featured in the book follow.

The author discusses Jane Anna Gordon’s proposal, in the 2006 international meeting of the Caribbean Philosophical Association, of creolizing theory. He summarizes the research it generated, including Gordon’s monograph on creolizing political theory, and the set of articles in this forum on creolizing social and political identities and theory.

I am lucky to have two such penetrating commentators as Robert Kirk and Andrew Melnyk. It is also fortunate that they come at me from different directions, and so cover different aspects of my book. Robert Kirk has doubts about the overall structure of my enterprise, and in particular about my central commitment to a distinctive species of phenomenal concepts. Andrew Melnyk, by contrast, offers no objections to my general brand of materialism. Instead he focuses specifically on my discussion of (...) the anti-materialist 'intuition of distinctness', raising questions about my attempt to explain this intuition away, and offering alternative suggestions of his own. (shrink)

L’intégration des technologies de l’information et de la communication (TIC) à l’apprentissage représente une avenue explorée à la fois par les milieux scientifique, institutionnel et scolaire afin de développer des environnements éducatifs stimulants pour les apprenants. Au Québec, L’École en réseau, un projet d’innovation technologique rassemblant 23 commissions scolaires et près d’une centaine d’écoles majoritairement de l’ordre primaire (6 à 12 ans), a mis entre autres en place le forum de coélaboration de connaissances (FCC) pour répondre à certains besoins (...) émergents de professionnels de l’éducation en matière d’avancées technopédagogiques ainsi qu’à ceux des apprenants baignant aujourd’hui dans la culture du numérique. Cette plateforme propose entre autres un espace de collaboration sous forme de discours écrit asynchrone dans lequel chaque élève collabore et construit sa compréhension d’un phénomène, d’un problème à résoudre ou d’un texte dans le cadre de multiples activités liées à différentes matières scolaires. Les participants – élèves, enseignants et conseillère pédagogique – sont amenés à écrire des textes, de longueur et de type divers, à les annoter, à les améliorer et à les enrichir à l’intérieur d’une base de connaissances qui conserve les traces de leurs échanges sous forme de toile interactive. Cet article traite du potentiel de documentation du FCC qui permet aux utilisateurs, soit les élèves, les enseignants, les conseillers pédagogiques, voire les chercheurs, de visualiser les activités, les progrès et les habitudes d’utilisation de chacun sous différents angles grâce à ses diverses fonctionnalités. Les traces laissées par la communication asynchrone facilitent en effet, selon Gikand, Morrow et Davis (2011), l’auto-évaluation de la compréhension qu’ont les élèves du contenu en plus de leur permettre le partage de questionnements ainsi qu’une réflexion sur leur contribution aux discussions sur le forum. Le potentiel relié à l’archivage de différentes données d’un forum, tel que défini par Heinrich, Milne et Moore (2009), permet l’analyse statistique et le profilage d’élèves afin de mieux répondre à leurs besoins en tant qu’apprenants. Aussi, l’analyse des interactions (posting behaviours) et suivis de fréquentation sur la plateforme (non-posting behaviours) peut amener les enseignants et les élèves à réfléchir sur leurs pratiques et diriger leurs interventions pédagogiques (Xie, 2013). Par ailleurs, la notion de transparence comme la définissent Lafuente Martínez et al. (2015), appliquée au FCC, est également présentée ici. Celle-ci comprend les échanges entre les élèves durant la réalisation de l’activité d’apprentissage et d’évaluation : les versions antérieures du travail tout au long de la réalisation de la tâche d’écriture et tout élément témoignant de leur processus réflexif (plans, notes, schémas, etc.). Cette mise en disponibilité du brouillon des textes des élèves représente une opportunité de documenter la progression des apprentissages de l’apprenant et d’exploiter le potentiel d’autorégulation de l’évaluation formative (Pachler, Daly, Mor, Mellar, 2010). Enfin, la possibilité de suivre l’évolution de la pensée critique de l’apprenant, à savoir si celui-ci, par ses interventions sur les textes des autres, propose des commentaires qui favorisent le dialogue et qui amènent des éléments de réflexion pour faire progresser les discussions (Olofsson, Lindberg, Stödberg, 2011) est mise en relief à l’aide des interventions des élèves, recueillies à même la plateforme. (shrink)

The subtitle of Joel Kovel's The Enemy of Nature (originally published in 2002, revised edition 2007) states his thesis bluntly: The End of Capitalism or the End of the World? Kovel thinks we need a revolution--although he is fully cognizant as to how remote that prospect seems.